THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT

Twenty-four hours later the Tampico was at sea. The itinerary proposed by Mr. Howland had been altered for the reason that cable despatches from New York had contained financial tidings that made it incumbent upon him to return to the United States without more delay than was necessary; and Ralph Oddington's firm had been retained by a corporation seeking protection against assaults of the Attorney-General's office, and he was wanted in the city at his "earliest convenience," which he had interpreted as meaning "right away."

And so there was to be no stopping at various ports, but a quick run to the States. Mr. Howland imparted this information to Dan as the two sat at table in the saloon over cigars and coffee the evening after the departure from San Blanco. The other members of the party had gone on deck.

"They can do their sightseeing at Galveston and Savannah, where you can call for your cotton and naval stores as usual." As Dan raised his eyebrows, Mr. Howland shook his head emphatically. "Can't help it," he said. "You see by this despatch," pointing to a pile of papers on the table, "that the Tybee's out of commission for a month; and business is business, party or no party. And now, Merrithew," stuffing the papers into his pocket as though all matters concerning them were finally settled, "I want to ask you about something else. Of course you're in this Central American service here and will be for a time. I've been thinking what you said about the fighting the other morning." He lit a cigar and pushed his case toward Dan. "I gathered you did not exactly approve of it. Didn't you?"

"Mr. Howland," replied Dan, "it was not the fighting that bothered me, it was the idea I had landed guns which your men were using to shoot down other men like sheep. It was a new sensation, and it got into me, I'll say that. Still it was none of my business; I was carrying out your instructions. I am sorry I was so unwise as to give you the impression I did."

"Not at all." Mr. Howland gazed at his cigar a moment, flicking the ashes off with his little finger. "Is that why you let the assassin go?"

Dan rose to the situation without hesitating.

"Mr. Howland, you were fishing when you asked that question. You don't have to do that. I did let that chap go. I believed he had attempted a good job. I saved Rodriguez's worthless life and took a risk in doing it. I would not have done so, but I thought the man was aiming at you; but since I did, the only reward I was entitled to, or wanted, was to do as I pleased with the man."

"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Howland. "Of course it occurred to you that Rodriguez's life, however worthless you hold it in other ways, might be extremely valuable to the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, which is myself?"

"Yes, I did think of that," replied Dan, "although I am employed by the Coastwise Company, I know you practically own both. I realize, too, your kindness to me in the past; but I did look on the fellow as a man honestly trying to serve his country; and when it came to deliver him up to be hanged—why I simply could not do it." Dan rose slowly. "I showed myself ungrateful to your interests. As I say, I appreciate what you have done. I am going to show that I do by asking you to consider my resignation in your hands to act upon as soon—whenever you please."

"Sit down, Captain Merrithew," said Mr. Howland, as though he had not heard the last words. "In the first place, you recognize that where there is no law and order legitimate business cannot be carried on. Where a country is governed in a haphazard manner, while it may be easy to secure contracts, it is impossible to collect on them. Business interests having connections with such countries find conditions intolerable, and where we can we rectify them. If you have studied San Blancan affairs you know that under Rodriguez (who, despite his cruelty, is honest) business here, whether controlled by myself or any one else, may for the first time in history be conducted on an honest and reliable basis. That is all I ask or have asked. I have no benefit of discriminating duties. I am largely interested in the business affairs of this country; but I obtained those interests fairly, and it is my duty to myself and my daughter and my business associates to maintain and develop them.

"I talk to you this way, Merrithew, because I have felt you were going wrong, and I wanted to set you right. I'll say frankly I know I'll not lose anything in so doing. I owe you a great deal. I am glad I do; for I like your sort. I wish I had a boy growing up as you have grown. You have a future before you—if you will only watch that damned hot head of yours."

Much that Mr. Howland had said in regard to the disinterested nature of his business activities was true; some things involved tactical evasion. In expressing his attitude toward Dan he was sincere. The Captain did not attempt to analyze. He was completely won, just as Mr. Howland wanted him to be. As he essayed to speak, Mr. Howland placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.

"Now, not a word, Merrithew. We'll forget it all and start fresh."

In the days of the voyage that followed, while it might not have been said that Virginia Howland snubbed Dan, neither could it have been said she was not at pains to see that she was never alone with him.

In fact, the attitude of either in relation to the other might in no way have been termed receptive. So far as Dan was concerned, he felt that, whether unwisely or not, he had made quite clear to her the terms upon which their friendship could continue; she had expressed her views no less clearly. The stand of both was irrevocable.

The second day out, feeling it to be his duty, he made tentative advances which, if not directly declined, at least left him the impression he had been gently and skilfully rebuffed. Since then he had been careful not to place himself again in a similar position.

At the table she would address him in the line of general conversation, and was at pains to greet him cordially whenever they met about the ship. But otherwise she left no doubt as to her wishes concerning him. Once she came into the saloon for breakfast before the rest of the party had taken their places. Dan was in his accustomed seat at the head of the table; he arose and wished her good-morning. She replied faintly, and then she sat toying idly with her rusk, her eyes for the most part fastened upon Dan, who had resumed his breakfast as though oblivious of her presence. She seemed trying to make up her mind to speak; but she failed. When Dan arose, bowed slightly, and left the saloon, she was still sitting silent with her breakfast untasted.

At Galveston Oddington left for New York by train, but Mr. Howland, receiving more assuring despatches, decided to remain with the party. They crammed cotton into the Tampico's holds, and later at Savannah they put pine-tar and pitch and other naval supplies aboard; thereby increasing Dan's responsibilities a hundredfold. But business was business, as Mr. Howland had said; and Dan had but to accept his worries and keep them from the party, which had fared well at the hands of friends in the two ports.

The Tampico left Savannah one afternoon about an hour after a trim Savannah liner had dropped down the river. At dinner that night the merriment was supreme, for in four days the Tampico would be in New York, and the Howlands' guests had had about all the excitement and salt air they wanted. The air was soft; there was brilliant starlight.

Dan had spent most of the evening on the bridge, Mr. Howland having requested him to make up the coast well out to sea in order to give the party a "final soaking" of real ocean air. He had not complied absolutely. Still, the Tampico was a good ninety miles off shore, well outside the track of south-bound vessels.

Shortly after nine o'clock he left the bridge and walked along the deck. The party was breaking up. Miss Howland had sauntered away from the group, and was leaning over the rail with her chin resting on her hands.

"Good-evening, Miss Howland," said Dan, pausing.

Virginia looked up quickly, and then resumed her former position.

"I don't know whether I ought to be nice to you or not, Captain Merrithew," she said.

Something in her voice gave Dan encouragement to make his reply.

"Won't you please try to be? In less than four days now you will be ashore—and then you'll probably never have any more opportunities."

The girl settled her chin more deeply into her palms.

"But you have not been nice. You have been horrid, ever since we left San Blanco."

Here was a phase of feminine character which Dan, not knowing, had not reckoned upon. However, he instinctively said the tactful thing.

"I—I am sorry. I thought I was pleasing you."

The girl slowly dragged her chin sidewise along her palms until she faced the Captain.

"Oh, you did! Has your experience with women taught you that is the best way to please them?"

Dan, now completely at sea, simply regarded her in silence. Virginia, inwardly triumphant, smiled.

"Now what can you do in four days to atone?"

"I might jump overboard."

"That would be romantic, but hardly—"

As the girl was speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming form right under her eyes—a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking over the bow.

"Oh!" Virginia jumped back with a startled cry and looked fearfully at her companion. He was smiling, and intuitively she recognized that it was not a smile of amusement, but of sympathy, reassurance.

"Oh, wasn't it horrid!"

"Yes, it was not a pretty sight," replied Dan. "Derelicts never are. There are lots of them around here; they travel in currents, sometimes in short orbits, sometimes hundreds of miles in a straight line."

The terror had not left her eyes, and she glanced astern to where the ugly shape was burying itself in the gloom. She was an impressionable girl, and that loathsome object, rising as it were out of the bottom of the deep, clanking, sighing, brought to her an epitome of all the fear and mystery of the great, dark, silent waste. And she looked at the Captain with new interest. Here was one of the men who brave these things, who brave great big problems, who face the unknown and a future as full of mystery, as fraught with evil possibilities as when the first mariner put out to the Beyond in a boat hollowed from a tree. In a flash that derelict taught her to read Dan better; gave her a better insight into the look that she sometimes caught in his steely, inscrutable eyes, and the grave lines in his sun-bronzed face. And in the light of this knowledge her soul went out to this man, this type of man, so strange, so utterly foreign to a girl brought up in an environment where such types do not exist.

She held out her hand.

"I am going to my stateroom now, Captain. Good-night. We are going to be better friends, aren't we?"

"Thank you," said Dan; and he watched her tall, white form as it disappeared down the deck. He gazed moodily out at the dark horizon. Friends! He searched himself thoroughly, and he could not deny the truth as formulated in his mind. Friends! How hollow the word sounded! He knew how hollow it would seem all through his life.

Better it should be nothing. Yes, far better, instinct told him that. Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness. This simile occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a student of the heavenly bodies. Yes, a meteor which had illumined his life.

He had never permitted himself to think in this way before. It is doubtful if before to-night he could have felt as he now did. It had all come over him suddenly with a rush. When he talked with her at the hotel in San Blanco he was filled with thoughts of his future, and assumed as granted his footing upon her plane. How absurd, how ridiculous this seemed now!

Why, why was it, he asked himself, that society or convention or whatever it was had drawn the grim chevaux de frise between those who had accomplished, or whose forebears had accomplished for them, and those who were yet to accomplish; with hosts eager to applaud the achievements of finality, but who had no adequate encouragement for those who had yet to achieve their mission, who fought their battles in the dark and won them in the glorious light, or losing, sank back into that oblivion out of which they had striven to emerge?

If fate had been different—yet if fate had been different he would never have seen her, perhaps. Yes, he should be satisfied; he had seen his star. And when it faded, as fade it must, in the vastness of the dark—why, what then? Well, at least he had seen his star; even this much is denied many. So, he would live it out and be thankful he had been permitted to feel the great thrill—to know that at least he had the heart for the greatest passion the world knows. Poor consolation, he told himself with a grim smile. And yet he who hitches his chariot to a star might well be content with less.

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